The Pursuit of Health Podcast

Ep9 (part 1) - Let Life be a Little Messy, Dr. Maya Shetreat

April 30, 2021 Dr. Eric Fethke
The Pursuit of Health Podcast
Ep9 (part 1) - Let Life be a Little Messy, Dr. Maya Shetreat
Show Notes

On this episode, our special guest is Dr. Maya Shetreat, M.D., a thought leader in Medicine and a pioneer who has helped redefine how we think about health.  After her conventional training as a Pediatric Neurologist, she  continued to grow intellectually and philosophically and is now also an herbalist and urban farmer. 

She is the author of the groundbreaking book, The Dirt Cure: Growing Healthy Kids with Food Straight from the Soil, which has been translated into multiple languages. Her work has been highlighted in The New York Times, The Telegraph, the Dr. Oz Show, and a multitude of other media forums.   

She is the Founder of the Terrain Institute - which fosters the field of Terrain Medicine: earth-based programs for transitional healing.  

Dr. Maya begins Part 1 of this episode by opening up about how her professional and personal life became intertwined early in her career. Her journey was triggered by one of her children’s health issues that took her from the mainstream of Medicine into a direction that questioned certain traditional doctrines and continues to challenge conventional wisdom. She faced limitations in treating her son, even from the best experts in the field , who fell back on their predictive coding - another form of implicit bias in healthcare - instead of keeping an open mind.  Feeling abandoned by standard approaches, and caught between her responsibilities to her son and her medical training, Dr. Maya’s investigations led her to a whole new world that emphasizes the profound impact of nutrition on our health.  

Soon enough she found herself forging a novel path that led her to become an expert in the microbiome and gut-brain connection of our bodies. She remains a passionate advocate for all of us to attain the mutually beneficial interaction with our planet and the other life forms we cohabitate with.   

In easy to understand terms, Dr. Maya takes us through the details of how we define the microbiome and how the gut-brain connection actually works. She describes the immune system under stress as constantly in alarm mode.  She has added to an extensive literature that explains how this constant stress mode, the cell danger response, when unable to turn off, leads to other medical conditions including mood disorders, autism, seizures and ADHD.   

Dr. Maya finishes Part 1 of this episode with us by warning that, more than ever before, our latest food processing mechanisms may be inciting our immune systems to remain constantly on alert - unable to take a break -  thereby adversely affecting our health.  She emphasizes that this over-purification of our food and environment is particularly harmful to our growing children.   

Dr. Fethke finishes this episode by summarizing Dr. Maya’s theme that How we start off life as infants and children has lifelong implications. He asks us to consider wether this concept should be part of Healthcare Reform.  

References: 

1. The Terrain Institute - shtreat.mn.co,   

2.  Drmaya.com   

3. Book - The Dirt Cure: Growing Healthy Kids with Food       Straight from the Soil - 2016, Publisher- Atria Books.  


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